Teacher & Community Leader from Haiti
Oil on canvas 40” x 30”

Porez Luxama’s family was “exiled” from Haiti during a coup d’état when he was a teenager. Speaking no English and landing in a tough Brooklyn high school, kids beat up Porez and his brother. They moved to an aunt’s house to attend a better school, and Porez won a soccer scholarship to St. John’s University. He excelled in math and science, and now teaches math — dressed like this — in a public junior high school, where he counsels kids who don’t know their fathers on the value of education. After school and on weekends he runs the Life of Hope Center that he founded, where immigrants get counseling and learn language, computer, job, and leadership skills to help them adapt and excel.